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s.' Cecilia perceived that her father was beginning to be fretted. She said, with a tact that effected its object: 'I am one who hear Mr. Culbrett without admiring his wit.' 'No, and I see no good in this kind of Steynham talk,' Colonel Halkett said, rising. 'We're none of us perfect. Heaven save us from political parsons!' Beauchamp was heard to utter, 'Humanity.' The colonel left the room with Cecilia, muttering the Steynham tail to that word: 'tomtity,' for the solace of an aside repartee. She was on her way to dress for church. He drew her into the library, and there threw open a vast placard lying on the table. It was printed in blue characters and red. 'This is what I got by the post this morning. I suppose Nevil knows about it. He wants tickling, but I don't like this kind of thing. It 's not fair war. It 's as bad as using explosive bullets in my old game.' 'Can he expect his adversaries to be tender with him?' Cecilia simulated vehemence in an underbreath. She glanced down the page: 'FRENCH MARQUEES' caught her eye. It was a page of verse. And, oh! could it have issued from a Tory Committee? 'The Liberals are as bad, and worse,' her father said. She became more and more distressed. 'It seems so very mean, papa; so base. Ungenerous is no word for it. And how vulgar! Now I remember, Nevil said he wished to see Mr. Austin.' 'Seymour Austin would not sanction it.' 'No, but Nevil might hold him responsible for it.' 'I suspect Mr. Stukely Culbrett, whom he quotes, and that smoking-room lot at Lespel's. I distinctly discountenance it. So I shall tell them on Wednesday night. Can you keep a secret?' 'And after all Nevil Beauchamp is very young, papa!--of course I can keep a secret.' The colonel exacted no word of honour, feeling quite sure of her. He whispered the secret in six words, and her cheeks glowed vermilion. 'But they will meet on Wednesday after this,' she said, and her sight went dancing down the column of verse, of which the following trotting couplet is a specimen:-- 'O did you ever, hot in love, a little British middy see, Like Orpheus asking what the deuce to do without Eurydice?' The middy is jilted by his FRENCH MARQUEES, whom he 'did adore,' and in his wrath he recommends himself to the wealthy widow Bevisham, concerning whose choice of her suitors there is a doubt: but the middy is encouraged to persevere: 'Up, up, my pretty middy; take a draugh
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